I don’t really understand fashion. Fortunately, I live in the Pacific Northwest. In my corner of the country, I once saw someone wear cargo shorts to a wedding, and there’s a grey-haired, bearded guy who runs around my neighborhood in a rainbow colored skirt, juggling scarves, and absolutely no one cares. It’s wonderful. Recently, though,…
Nearly every week, I engage in the same stupidity. I refer not to my tendency to watch DVR’d episodes of American Idol for hours on end (long after, I should note, the phone lines for voting have closed, making my behavior particularly inexplicable, even by reality TV standards). I stopped doing that in 2013, after my…
Rand always tells me he envies my palate, which cracks me up because it’s such an unlikely compliment. But it comes up time and again, whenever I identify a spice in a dish that he’s unable to, or I catch a whiff of a bakery blocks before he does. Others who’ve noticed it have…
As an American, it’s often weird going to Europe, because their consumer culture isn’t anywhere near what we have at home. There are shops, sure, but there isn’t the same onslaught of … stuff. In the U.S., we understand that you haven’t really had a proper vacation until you’ve purchased at least three shot glasses,…
– One of the things I love about any friendship is when you create shared memories together. It pushes you from the realm of merely “people who get along” into the world of “people who have been through some shit together.” It opens up the door to inside jokes and stories that begin with, “Remember…
– It’s funny how quickly the bizarre becomes normal. How things that are strange and weird become familiar and every day. So that after a while, we forget that they’re even all that strange, until someone else points it out to us. When we first moved back to Seattle from Florida, nearly 20 years…
– I’m such a sucker for old things. Whether it be grey-haired octogenarians or day-old pastries, I find myself smitten. Sure, they’re sometimes a bit crustier than you’d like them to be, and you can’t help but think of what they were like when fresh, but they’re still fun to nibble on. AND THAT GOES DOUBLE…
I love playing the part of the Ugly American. The way I figure it, if people are going to judge and hate me without knowing me, the least I can do is have a little fun at their expense. The best part is the look on their faces when they realize I’ve been messing with…
They are four-inch-tall, rhinestone-studded confections. And they were probably a mistake. – And yet, I regret nothing. I found them in a boutique near Piazza Navona, as the rain fell on our last morning in Rome. I saw them in the window, and stopped abruptly. The way romantic leads do in Hollywood movies. I stopped,…
Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury
by Geraldine DeRuiter
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